East European Politics

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Theorising resilience: Russia’s reaction to US and

EU sanctions

Andrei Guter-Sandu & Elizaveta Kuznetsova

To cite this article: Andrei Guter-Sandu & Elizaveta Kuznetsova (2020): Theorising
resilience: Russia’s reaction to US and EU sanctions, East European Politics, DOI:
10.1080/21599165.2020.1743690

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/21599165.2020.1743690

Published online: 31 Mar 2020.

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EAST EUROPEAN POLITICS
https://doi.org/10.1080/21599165.2020.1743690

Theorising resilience: Russia’s reaction to US and EU sanctions

a b,c
Andrei Guter-Sandu and Elizaveta Kuznetsova *
a
Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK;
b
Department of International Politics, City, University of London, London, UK; cCenter for the Study of Europe,
Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This article analyses responses in the Russian media to the economic Received 4 September 2019
sanctions imposed in the wake of the annexation of Crimea. We look Accepted 13 March 2020
at the near-Kremlin figure Dmitry Kiselyov, explaining how elite actors
KEYWORDS
employ persuasive tools in order to fashion and promote collective Resilience; discourse analysis;
resilience not only as a value, but also as part of a quest for a post- Russia; sanctions; media;
Soviet identity. We show how resilience in the face of economic neoliberalism; Russian
hardship is built and sustained, ensuring the continuity of the foreign policy; national
incumbent government. We further theorise on the underpinnings identity
of constructing resilience, which ultimately strengthens national
identity in the post-Soviet ideological vacuum.

Introduction
[W]hat the European Union is doing with those sanctions is nothing but a theatre of the
absurd. (Putin 2016)

The annexation of Crimea by Russia in March 2014 has been a highly contested matter.
From the very start, while Russia affirmed it was acting in accord with the sentiment of
the local population and within its legal prerogatives, various Western leaders, including
US President Obama and UK Foreign Secretary William Hague, claimed that by deploying
troops in the peninsula, Russia was in violation of international agreements, including the
UN Charter and the so-called Budapest Memorandum (Akinyemi 2014). In it was stated
that under the latter treaty, signed in 1994 by Russia, the US, and the UK, Russia was
expected to guarantee Ukraine’s territorial integrity in exchange for the latter’s giving
up of the world’s third largest nuclear weapons stockpile (Bernauer and Ruloff 1999).
But a series of events, including President Yanukovych’s flight from Ukraine, escalating
mass upheaval, and separatist movements, provided the groundwork for a hastily coordi-
nated referendum in Crimea on the 16th of March on whether the autonomous republic
should join Russia. The positive result of the referendum was followed by Putin’s signing of
a bill the following day incorporating Crimea into the Russian Federation. The immediate
response of the US and the EU was to condemn the move and adopt sanctions first against
individuals and companies, then against whole sectors of the economy: oil, military, tech-
nology, and state-owned banks (Jones and Whitworth 2014).

CONTACT Andrei Guter-Sandu a.guter-sandu@lse.ac.uk

*Authors listed in alphabetical order, equal authorship is implied.
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 A. GUTER-SANDU AND E. KUZNETSOVA

In Russia, every round of Western sanctions was met with talks of a commensurate
round of counter-measures in a merry-go-round of sanctions (TASS 2017). While this exter-
nal dimension of the political response was clear, the economic pressure created a
different need – one for an internal, domestic reaction that would mediate between the
high politics of foreign affairs and the grass-roots passions of the average voter. How
then does the Kremlin present this economic battle with the West to the Russian
people? This simple but important question has remained a relative blind spot of the lit-
erature on economic sanctions. We argue that it is necessary to direct our attention to the
media discourse aimed at legitimising the state’s foreign policy for the population, not
only because it is a quintessential part of the sanctions mechanism, but also because it
can provide salient clues as to both how the Kremlin frames its relationship with the
West and how it uses sanctions as a potential opportunity for fostering public consent
and support in times of duress. This will help shed light on the mechanisms of Putin’s
support domestically despite the economic hardship caused by the sanctions. We argue
that by reinterpreting sanctions in such a way that it erases its original meaning – a punish-
ment for an illegal action – and construes it as an aggressive move against Russian people
instead, the country’s elite provided the existentially needed ideological material for
society. At the centre of this material, we claim, is a discourse of resilience employed as
an instrument for interpreting and reacting to events but also gathering public support.
While the effectiveness of the sanctions is a matter of contention (Hufbauer et al. 2009;
Drezner 2015), academic literature has generally identified several variables that are con-
sidered fundamental to how sanctions function. For instance, a recurrent one is the type of
regime targeted: sanctions directed at an autocratic regime with a firm grip on power and
without a sizeable or capable opposition will be less effective than those directed at a
regime characterised by a notable degree of political vibrancy and openness, as will be
the case with regimes that possess a higher degree of structural power on the inter-
national arena (Kim 2013; Oechslin 2014; Lee 2015). Another important aspect that influ-
ences both the decision to adopt sanctions and their efficacy is cultural linkages: the closer
a country is culturally, the less likely that it will be sanctioned; at the same time, if sanc-
tioned, the more potent are the effects of the sanctions (Driscoll, Halcoussis, and Lowen-
berg 2011). Some other aspects highlighted when studying economic sanctions are:
duration – the longer the duration, the more profound the effect (Afesorgbor and Maha-
devan 2016); support of third-party trading partners – if the latter cooperate with the
country issuing the sanctions, their effect is amplified (McLean and Whang 2010); and
extent of economic cost – the deeper and more comprehensive the cost, the higher the
likelihood of the sanctioned country to conform to the demands of the sanctions issuer
(Nureev and Busygin 2016; Hatipoglu and Peksen 2018). These factors are important,
but one aspect that warrants further analysis and is, we argue, especially salient in our
case, is the way in which sanctions may be discursively instrumentalised by the ruling
regime in a target country for its own political goals and thus transformed into an oppor-
tunity for the accumulation of political capital.
The existing research on the economic sanctions and Russia has been preoccupied with
the shifts in Russian foreign economic policy (Wang 2015; Skalamera 2018; Mau 2016;
Hedberg 2018), which it is shown to take alternative routes to development, particularly
by engaging with emerging and non-Western markets. Similarly, shifts in domestic econ-
omic activity as a result of sanctions has been underlined by some (Connolly 2018; Wengle
 EAST EUROPEAN POLITICS 3

2016), particularly when it comes to cushioning affected economic sectors and relying
more on domestic production, with varying results. In other places, scholars have been
analysing the possibility of a backfire of anti-Russian sanction on the European states, iden-
tifying “winners” and “losers” at the economic level (Giumelli 2017) on the one hand, or
focusing on the “international perspective of the applicable WTO trade rules”, on the
other (Neuwirth and Svetlicinii 2016). While these excellent works have explored and
explained in detail the tangible economic and legal effects of sanctions, the impact on
the domestic ideational environment in the country deserves further scrutiny. Indeed,
some researchers have called for broadening the scope of analysis to include the “com-
parative utility of sanctions” as well as to understand the “unintended consequences” of
these punitive measures (Veebel and Markus 2015; Giumelli 2013). Some have suggested
that the external punishment measures may cause an intensification of national senti-
ment, causing the so-called “rally-around-the-flag” phenomenon (Veebel and Markus
2015; Galtung 1967; Verdier and Woo 2011). Indeed, there has also been an emphasis
on scrutinising the role of the media and communication in fostering the “rally” effect
(Pashentsev 2020; Kazun 2016).
In the Russian case, scholars have pointed at the emergence of a new media strategy,
what Tolz and Teper (2018) call “agitainment”, a highly ideological coverage of political
events that is presented in the most appealing way, being able to engage various
viewers. Building on this, our work explores on the one hand the mechanism by which
authoritarian governments construct public consent through promoting a particular
interpretation of sanctions. On the other, we theorise on the deeper meaning of these
interpretations for the issue of national identity. In the following sections we show how
a discursive apparatus is put to use for strengthening the sense of unity as a nation. Hutch-
ings and Tolz (2015) have been amongst the few authors to showcase divisions in the
Russian society that emanate from TV screens through their in-depth examination of
the questions of ethnicity and multiconfessionality. Bearing this in mind, our work
focuses on how the government in its quest for constructing consensus uses sanctions
as a tool to patch the problems of post-Soviet identity.
The way we unpack this is through the analysis of discourses promoted through state
television channels. By focusing on the case of Dmitry Kiselyov – both a political and a
media persona as we will explain later – in the wake of the adoption of the first three
waves of sanctions against Russia, we are able to grasp both the elites’ understanding
of Russia’s relation to the West in the aftermath of the annexation and how popular
acquiescence is garnered through the dissemination of ideas, values, and narratives. We
find that the state-sanctioned discourse employed techniques of resilience narrative pro-
motion, constructed by invoking notions of mass mobilisation, import substitution, and
unity promotion. This should be seen not only as an interpretation of the events, but
also as an attempt to mould individuals’ self-understanding, their actions, and, conse-
quently, their support for the regime. We further theorise on the roots of this particular
discourse employed by Kiselyov and argue that Russia should primarily be seen in
terms of its ongoing quest for a post-Soviet identity.
The paper continues as follows: first, we argue for the importance of analysing elite dis-
course that emanates from the state-owned media as a methodology for understanding
economic sanctions. We then look at how the discourse of resilience, promoted by the
Russian elite, has been activated and structured in relation to the long-standing ideological
4 A. GUTER-SANDU AND E. KUZNETSOVA

debates in the country. Third, we contextualise the insights stemming from the material by
looking at the ideational context that Russia provided. Finally, we conclude by arguing for
the importance of paying due attention to the reaction of sanctioned regimes as a govern-
ing technology important in the accumulation or preservation of political capital.

Studying the Russian elite discourse

In this article, we examine the Kremlin’s discursive response to the sanctions and how it
was delivered to the domestic audience through national TV. While this methodology is
not entirely novel in IR research, it has not yet been applied to studies on sanctions. We
argue that finding the object of discourse that condenses both the way in which the
elite thinks and at the same time transmits these ideas to the domestic audience could
enrich the existing scholarship. The importance of television in shaping social discourse
in Russia (Laurelle 2014) has guided our decision to focus on the highly influential
weekly news analysis programme Vesti Nedeli1, hosted by Russia’s “chief spin doctor”
and “propagandist” Dmitry Kiselyov (Ennis 2014). Kiselyov is a key figure of the Kremlin’s
media apparatus and was personally affected by the sanctions. Apart from his TV journalist
role, he is the head of Rossiâ Segodnâ holding – Russia’s key public diplomacy network.
Bearing in mind Russia’s state media system, Kiselyov is an influential, quasi-political
figure in Russia. Indeed, an online poll shows that 53.6% of the public base their TV
show preferences on the individuality of the host (Kashirin 2014).
However, far from attempting to prove the show’s influence on public opinion in Russia,
we picked Vesti Nedeli based on it being in line with official statements. In fact, following
the Soviet tradition, self-censorship is deeply engrained in contemporary Russian journal-
istic practice in the sense that reporters are very well aware of what to say and what not to
say (Oates 2013). Thus, Vesti Nedeli can be considered an unambiguous amplified voice of
Kremlin. This provides us with the vantage point of witnessing an actor that is at once in a
leveraged position against his target-audience and a spokesperson for state-sanctioned
policy/ideology. Although there is empirical evidence that points to the fact that
Russian audiences oftentimes do not share the mainstream line that is promoted by
Kremlin and that Russian people do not believe everything they see on state television
(Mickiewitcz 2008), TV still remains one of the most important reference points for the
public. In fact, the fragmentation of the audience that Mickiewitcz (2008) emphasises is
what Kremlin is actively trying to solve with the efforts we discuss here. Furthermore,
media analysis offers a way to understand the discursive mechanisms through which par-
ticular ideas are proposed for the public’s articulation or rejection. Like the traditional
official addresses to the public, this is an important channel through which power can
be exercised outside of conventional state apparatuses. But the crucial point is that this
form of power is in fact not repressive, but productive (Foucault 1990), in that it is not
merely used as a form of framing the events in a particular way (D’Angelo and Kuypers
2010) or deproblematising sensitive issues (Kazun 2016), but it is also employed as an
avenue for mobilisation. In our case, for instance, Kiselyov, through the discourse of resi-
lience, does not solely act as an interpretive filter for the punitive measures, but also as a
conduit for activating the population in a particular way.
In the Russian language the term “resilience” does not have a straightforward translation.
Perhaps the most fitting words are стойкость, выносливость, упорство, and готовность
 EAST EUROPEAN POLITICS 5

к испытаниям (stojkost′ , vynoslivost′ , uporstvo, and gotovnost′ k ispytaniâm), though they

have rather different connotations. For example, stojkost′ and uporstvo refer primarily to
the firmness of character and the ability to stand your ground. Vynoslivost’ refers to physical
resilience and the ability to adapt to various conditions, both environmental and social.
Gotovnost’ k ispytaniâm means to be up for a challenge and has a connotation of courageous
behaviour. In terms of Russian discourse studies, the discourse of resilience, the one that
encapsulates all of these four words, has been discussed in relation to economic topics.
For example, Berezhnaia (2019) discusses references to resilience as part of the broader
heroic discourse that is omnipresent in Russian TV. She refers to such stories as pensioners
surviving on a pension that is below the living wage or young students travelling around the
world on a tight budget. Berezhnaya mentions that this is presented as a manifestation of
heroic behaviour. References to these contexts at the same time chime in with the Christian
idea of moral resilience, the theme that has been preached by the Russian Orthodox Church
and has been widely discussed in Russian literature, including by Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy.
Thus, the discourse of resilience is not a novel frame for the Russian society. Despite its fam-
iliarity to the Russian audience, however, it has gained a rather new and intensified appli-
cation after the introduction of sanctions.
To study the discourse of Kiselyov, we performed a critical discourse analysis (CDA)
(Fairclough 1995). The intent of this methodology is to unravel “the social practice of
language behaviour, with the dialectics between society, power, values, ideologies, and
opinions expressed and constituted in and about language” (Wodak 1989, xiv). Any dis-
course is an order of meanings with its own structure of even a hierarchy of contexts (Fair-
clough 1995). Deconstructing these acts through linguistic analysis is aimed at providing a
small window into how language constructs relations (Porter 2006).
Critical discourse analysis of a communicative event is a structured analysis of the three
facets, which Fairclough (1995, 57) calls “text, discourse practice, and sociocultural prac-
tice”. Within this framework, we started our analysis from the “semiotic entry” to the
text.2 Although the subject of analysis – video and sound bites – is in Russian, this work
delivers a translation complemented with the background analysis in order to clarify
the lexical style. These semantic analysis strategies included a thorough examination of
the word choice, exaggerations, and syntax in Kiselyov’s speech. Moreover, the study
also looks at the exclusion of particular topics from a narrative, a phenomenon which
plays a major role in shaping discourse.
The second level of CDA, employed in our research, was the analysis of the discourse
practice, namely the “discursive routines” and “editorial procedures” (Fairclough 1995,
58). In particular, we looked at the social meaning of the TV show that we analysed
within and discussed the role it plays in the Russian society today. Bearing this in mind,
we further theorised on the genre, form and meaning of the messages emanating from
the TV screens. This part of the interpretive discourse analysis allowed us to look at the
dialectical relationship between text production and text consumption. Thus, not only
does it take into account the utterance but also the context of that utterance, for
example, the meaning of media in Russia, what social baggage it carries and why.
The third element of Faiclough’s CDA model is the analysis of the sociocultural practice.
At this stage, we have taken our analysis to a different level of abstraction from the par-
ticular event. We have taken into account the wider context of institutional practices, pol-
itical history of Russia, the wider interpretation of the cultural connotations that the
6 A. GUTER-SANDU AND E. KUZNETSOVA

promoted discourses bear. Deeply concerned with the questions of power and ideology,
this was the starting point of our comparative investigation of the resilience discourse.
Data collection for this study employed sampling methodology based on the news
points selection. This allowed us to pinpoint issue-specific audio-visual material. The
time frame for the case study is from 17 March 2014 until 31 December 2015. According
to the chronology of the events, we picked the following news points. Each of them rep-
resents an instance when Russia has been “betrayed” by one of its closest partners, as
identified by the official Kremlin’s rhetoric. Therefore, the particular evaluation of the
events by Kiselyov demonstrates the country’s resistance to the so-called “aggressiveness”
of the West (Kiselyov 2014a, 2014b, 2014c, 2014d):

. 17 March 2014 – USA, the EU and Canada introduce the first round of sanctions against
Russia, following the Crimean Referendum, affecting Russian officials.
. 21 March 2014 – the extended list includes several Crimean officials and Dmitry
Kiselyov.
. 17 April 2014 – the European Parliament adopts a non-binding resolution against the
South Stream, recommending a search for alternative sources of gas supplies.
. 31 July 2014 – EU sanctions some of the biggest Russian banks, such as Sberbank, VTB
Bank, Gazprombank, etc.
. 13 March 2015 – EU extends anti-Russian sanctions until 15 September 2015.
. 19 June 2015 – EU extends sanctions against Crimean until 23 June 2016.
. 21 December 2015 – EU extends sanctions against Russia until 31 July 2016.

These news points were correlated with the chronologically nearest weekly issues of
Vesti Nedeli, analysing only sanctions-related TV packages. Overall, we have analysed 14
h of audio-visual material. The quotes selected were the only instances in which these
events were mentioned and interpreted by Kiselyov’s programme within the determined
research timeframe. These were established during the three-stage CDA analysis that
entailed a detailed text evaluation of every instance in which the above-mentioned
events were discussed. In the section below we present a selection of representative
quotes that allow us to showcase the inner workings of what we have termed the dis-
course of resilience.

Promoting resilience
Vesti Nedeli is a 1.5–2 h programme, which provides Kiselyov’s “subjective” analysis of
current affairs. It airs, however, on the state-owned Rossiâ 1 channel, with the highest
reach in the country – 98% (Media Int. Russia 2015). Its scheduled broadcast is at prime-
time every Sunday. Kiselyov and his programme have gained the attention of Western
media in 2014 (Ennis 2014). This is mainly due to its grotesque, theatrical style of reporting.
Kiselyov, hailing from the Soviet propaganda school, utilises traditional persuasive tech-
niques, delivering his commentary in a well-explained and simplified manner. In terms
of the audio-visual style, Vesti Nedeli could be easily compared to stereotypical Hollywood
action movies – frequent use of graphic design, music, and editing styles that are com-
monly aimed at shocking the audience or at creating suspense. In an attempt to boost
people’s national pride he would not hesitate to boast, for example, that Russia is the
 EAST EUROPEAN POLITICS 7

only country “genuinely capable of turning the USA into radioactive ash”, showing a
graphic reconstruction of an atomic bomb explosion on the background (Ennis 2014).
Thus, the format of the programme is a unique synthesis of a news analysis and an
opinion column. In other words, Vesti Nedeli is Kiselyov’s personal TV blog. Therefore, his
image is an essential element of the programme’s rhetoric.
In presenting the sanctions to the Russian audience and encouraging a public reaction
that would be desirable for the authorities, Kiselyov has consistently structured the dis-
course around the idea of resilience. We have identified the three discourse-building
blocks that have helped Kiselyov construct sanctions as an exceptional event, the starting
point of the new type of confrontation between Russia and the West. Firstly, the focus was
directed towards mobilising and encouraging the audience to pull together and withstand
foreign aggression. This theme sets the tone for a more precise call to action, such as pro-
moting alternatives in the form of import substitution that could be achieved through
domestic production boosting. These two elements of discourse are constantly reinforced
by constructing the enemy in the face of the US and bringing up a narrative of antagonising
powers.

Block I. Mobilising and uniting the country

As an immediate discursive response to the events, Kiselyov was prompt to interpret sanc-
tions as an exceptionally unfriendly move from the West against Russia. In other words,
Russia’s foreign policy actions that, in fact, prompted the sanctions were almost entirely
absent from the discourse. This produced a conclusion that sanctions are something
that comes out of nowhere. A key to understanding the discourse in this regard is the
idea that the current state of world affairs in which Russia is engaged is a “Cold War
2.0” (Kiselyov 2014). Such rhetoric, evoking memories of Soviets vs. Americans, aims to
raise contemporary Russia to the level of a superpower of equal footing to the US.
Hence, the sanctions become reconceptualised from the idea of punitive measures
against illegal behaviour to that of a political and economic attack to which the country
must respond with strength and dignity. In fact, this rhetoric is not dissimilar to the
framing that has been dominant in the West – many Anglo-Saxon media outlets have
referred to the tensions between Russia and the West as a Cold War revival – with the
mutual blame-game at the heart of this confrontation.
In the case of Kiselyov’s narrative, a united Russia is key to maintaining stability and
therefore resisting Western aggression. In fact, united Russia is also a symbol that has
been historically linked to the war context. Starting from the Kievan Rus through the
WW2 to the Cold War (Tsygankov 2016), the idea that Russia can only withstand foreign
aggression by uniting its entire people, erasing the peacetime differences and tensions,
has been embedded in war-time narratives. Similarly, in the case of Kiselyov’s response
to sanctions (Kiselyov 2016), the main ideological focus is on propagating total mobilis-
ation. The importance of the war context cannot be neglected also due to the deep-
seated notion that “hard” methods, including propaganda, can be justified in times of
war, when much is at stake.
Kiselyov’s references to historical events justifies the rhetoric of resilience by implicitly
linking sanctions with the context of victorious moments for Russia, such as Napoleon’s
and Hitler’s defeats. This is aimed at shifting from the natural feeling of vulnerability in
8 A. GUTER-SANDU AND E. KUZNETSOVA

times of crisis to encouraging the audience to feel inspired or empowered. This technique
is also intertwined with the concept of “the right side of history”. This commonly used
phrase in contemporary Russian political discourse is a noteworthy linguistic structure.
Encountered in almost every debate about Ukraine, Crimea and sanctions, this formula
serves as an absolute argument to support essentially any claim. Notably, Kiselyov’s
paternal style of speech enhances the advisory connotations, giving him the role of a
nation’s psychotherapist. His performances frequently close with calming addresses to
the people, such as:
Everything is stable. We shall study and work. (Kiselyov 2016)

Kiselyov’s quasi-familial form of address is reinforced also by virtue of the demographics of

the media channel. Rossiya 1 is mainly aimed at a working-class audience whose economic
adversity has been attributed, in the official discourse, to falling oil prices – not sanctions
(Weafer 2015). Therefore, the emotional effect of this rhetoric is crucial. This is achieved
also by the audio-visual aspect. For example, the programme’s lead-in is edited in an
aggressive, almost threatening style, evoking eerie feelings in the audience. Therefore,
when Kiselyov appears in the studio, his prominent look and confident speech have a reas-
suring effect. Thus, a metaphorical line can be drawn between the “demonic”, “provoca-
tive” West, on the one hand, and “stable” and “peaceful” Russia, on the other.
Kiselyov’s use of resilient imagery is aimed at shaping the domestic understanding of
Russia’s foreign policy by uniquely intertwining the country’s geopolitical ambitions
with domestic aims. Within this context, which creates an image of Russia as a powerful
global actor, Kiselyov tries to instil the idea that the economic situation in Russia is
stable and sanctions are not a threat for the country:
It is clear that sanctions will not result in any substantial damage to Russia, and we’ll survive
any minor inconvenience they might cause. (Kiselyov 2014c)

Notably, playing down the effect of sanctions on the country, Kiselyov shows little attempt
at identifying this “damage”. In other words, supressing this negative aspect, while focus-
ing on the country’s economic leverage abroad, provides a fragmented interpretation of
the effects of sanctions on Russia. This rhetoric structures the context around the absurdity
of Western policies. Kiselyov often explicitly states this notion, for example:
Headline: Sanctions Blindfolded

This week the US and the EU introduced another round of sanctions. Why exactly they did it, is
very unclear. Especially now, when there is finally some hope of peaceful solution of the
conflict in Eastern Ukraine.

and
How much Russia will suffer from their sanction knows no one, even Europe [does not know].
(Kiselyov 2014e)

Moreover, the programme often included almost satirical TV pieces, explicitly mocking US
spokespeople, such as Jen Psaki. It was specifically focused on the exact wording American
officials used to name the type and the purpose of sanctions against Russia:
Headline: How to get along with scalpel-sectorial sanctions? (Kiselyov 2014e)
 EAST EUROPEAN POLITICS 9

However, this communicative technique is not intended merely to entertain the audience.
It also seeks to metaphorically undermine the authority of the “enemy’s” decision-making
process. Kiselyov’s discourse, therefore, both encourages the audience to view the situ-
ation in terms of unambiguous moral truths and normalises the instability of the country’s
economy. This communicative strategy thereby combines appeals to mobilisation with
elements of encouragement and comfort. As a building block of the discourse of resilience,
the narrative of mobilisation, therefore, operates at two levels: on the one hand, promot-
ing macro-popular unity in the face of adversity, and, on the other, instilling affective
investment and personal reassurance at the level of the social micro-unit.

Block II. Promoting alternatives: import substitution

Calls to resilience in the Russian elite discourse extend beyond normative claims of mobil-
isation and unity to include more precise instructions for social and economic action. As
described above, the persistent construal of the economic crisis in Russia as caused
solely by external aggression overshadows discussions of domestic problems of govern-
ance, political inefficiency and incompetence. However, the particular brand of resilience
Kiselyov is putting forth contains also positive and productive claims. For example, con-
demning the EU and the US for implementing sanctions as a watershed in relationship
between Russia and the West, Kiselyov highlighted the unexpected benefits of these for
Russia’s domestic production sector. Focusing on “import substitution”, Kiselyov empha-
sised that Russia should be grateful to the West for creating such an “opportunity”:
Perhaps, the worst thing which could happen to Russia now is if the West lifts sanctions,
because then we would all relax again. We would tell the domestic producers to relax,
saying that we will import everything. (Kiselyov 2014)

These references to the Soviet-period of the self-sufficient economy point at Kiselyov’s

sentimental affection to the period of the country’s “greatness” and the desire to resurrect
that state of affairs. The following quotation is an example of this rhetoric that is aimed at
discursively boosting the image of Russia’s might and independence, while refusing to
admit the country’s apparent diplomatic failure with its closest neighbour:
Headline: “Own Product” – import substitution

“Russia has to produce everything that is needed for national defence on its own territory. The
reason for this is Western sanctions” [Because Ukraine used to produce special military
engines for Russia.] “So they keep producing it, but don’t send it to us. There is nowhere
else they can sell it. Their warehouses will burst soon. But who cares, we’ll do it ourselves,
and even better! We will start producing the engines of the new generation. The government
counted that it won’t require a big budget and the process promises to be healthy”. (Kiselyov
2014d)

This traditional persuasive technique reminds of Soviet propaganda (Silina 2011), when
praising the level of heavy industry was omnipresent. The notion constructed at that
time that a country is stable and strong when its economy can produce anything to guar-
antee the nation’s safety, therefore, unconsciously evokes these imageries when the issue
is contextualised. The associative link with the economically prosperous years of the Soviet
Union is inherently connected to the notion of Russia’s distinctive identity, predominantly
contrary to the Western world. In particular, Kiselyov was often backing his statements by
10 A. GUTER-SANDU AND E. KUZNETSOVA

citing Putin’s direct speech, a multivectoral technique, which virtually supports his per-
sonal opinion, on the one hand, and promotes Putin’s authority, on the other. For example,
Vladimir Putin: “We need to ensure that everything that our military sector needs was pro-
duced independently from the world”. (Putin 2014)

On the one hand, re-evaluating the economic situation in the country and promoting
alternative ways of development that would be independent from the “aggressive” and
oppressive West is underpinned by the overall countering motive in Kiselyov’s rhetoric.
On the other hand, the second element of discourse of resilience is the only one of the
three blocks that contains productive claims, containing direct incentives for dealing
with the crisis. Thus, the idea of import substitution espoused by Kiselyov effects a para-
doxical move: it spins the present as an opportunity to suspend the unfavourable status-
quo, revisit an idealised past shrouded in feelings of nostalgia for a self-sufficient industry-
heavy Russia, and project it into the future as the history-sanctioned right strategy Russia
should have been following all along. However, the import substitution claim remains
vague in Kiselyov’s speech, lacking precise data or plan of action. This mechanism indi-
cates the deep-seated fear that leaks out of the elite discourse due to the lack of a sustain-
able anti-crisis economic solution.

Block III. Portraying the enemies

The third aspect picked up by Kiselyov that has been present in the elite discourse of the
post-soviet age (Morozov 2015) is the notion that the country is in a transitional geopoli-
tical situation. Here, the discourse of resilience emerges as an act of response, a tool for
protecting against the other. This structurally determinant “us” vs. “them” dichotomy
played a crucial part in Kiselyov’s rhetoric. In fact, the consistent reference to the aggres-
sive and hostile West was reinforcing the remaining two elements of the discourse dis-
cussed above. Against this backdrop, the between-the-lines notion Kiselyov was
delivering in his coverage of the issue was that Europe itself is not Russia’s main
“enemy”, but rather is yet another victim of America’s imperialistic policies, which does
not appear to desire to submit to the conciliatory multipolar worldview, but is constantly
engaged in a process of imperial overreach. In practice, Kiselyov often provides his audi-
ence with a detailed “social analysis”:
I think one of the main distractions Russians have is an excessive euro-centrism of our men-
tality. Unconsciously Europe is something desirable for us. But there is no Europe as we ima-
gined it. It is very different now. Many values that are talked about are merely talked about due
to inertia. They are not real values, it the sense that they are not valued in Europe anymore. For
example, the freedom of speech. In Russia the level of this freedom is much higher, but we still
think that it is better in Europe for some reason. (Kiselyov 2014)

Subscribing to a worldview fashioned by the dominating force of US military, politics, and

culture, Europe lost its authenticity and got tangled into an irremediable process of deca-
dence. But far from being mere victim, Europe is also a perpetrator. Being personally
affected by sanctions, Kiselyov condemns European “double standards”:
Banning journalists from entering countries is the worst they could come up with, because it
literally means limiting the freedom of press. (Kiselyov 2014)
 EAST EUROPEAN POLITICS 11

These quotes are particularly important for understanding the tendencies in Kremlin’s
official discourse. Apart from not providing any support for his statement, Kiselyov
employs tactical critique of liberal values, pointing out that they are ephemeral, lacking
genuine grounding and real-world practice. Therefore, his criticism is not only directed
at the type of values that are promoted but at the entire idea of a possibility for an auth-
entically attractive ideology. In this discursive space, instability no longer functions as a
sign of weakness and failure but rather creates room for metaphors of common enemy
to be invoked more and more often. Indeed, the narrative that has been dominating
the Russian public sphere for decades is that the country turned from a “peripheral politi-
cal actor” to a “leading political actor”, once it united territories under the rule of The Grand
Duchy of Muscovy (15th–16th Cent.) (Dugin 2014). In this vein, maintaining or expanding
the country’s territories is, therefore, uncritically considered the main aim of Russia. In
many ways, this is tied to one of the most prominent state-sanctioned ideas that has
influenced Russia’s identity debates as well as its interaction with the outside world,
and which frames Kiselyov’s narrative: the idea of “multipolarity” (Silvius 2016).
A fluid concept, multipolarity is best understood negatively, in opposition to an US-
centric vision of global affairs based on liberal internationalism, neoliberal capitalism,
and global governance. Importantly, the multipolar world envisioned by Russia’s political
elite and adopted by Kiselyov has a geopolitical dimension associated with the search for
alliance building with China, India, and the Islamic world, started by Primakov during his
term as a Minister of Foreign Affairs (1996–1998) as a result of the perceived reluctance of
the West to include Russia as an equal partner in a reorganised European security edifice,
and the consolidation of NATO structures in its vicinity (Sakwa 2015). Practically, this
concept helps distinguish between the allies and the enemies. In his coverage of sanc-
tions, Kiselyov thus emphasised that Russia should not be preoccupied with Kremlin-EU
misunderstandings as there are plenty more fish on the other side of the globe. For
example,
The strength of Russia is that is not solely European … Europe is our shared ‘soup’, which we
cooked together, and we don’t deny it is a part of our identity, but these sanctions, a shameful
move from their side, allow Russia to open up to the East. (Kiselyov 2015)

This thought was commonly delivered to the public by showing how reluctant certain EU
leaders are in implementing sanctions and other economic restrictions against Russia.
Reporting on sanctions often includes references to the economic ties between Russia,
the EU and the US: for instance, the US-Russia space partnership and America’s lack of
equipment to send astronauts to orbit (Kiselyov 2016d). Enemy imaging is not limited
to identifying the external enemy. Russia, in Kiselyov’s view, should also be aware of
internal “traitors”. For example,
I think that these lists (of individuals under sanctions) are made by Russian opposition, the so-
called 5th column. We know their names, we know how they write. They send these lists to
foreign embassies and this is their way of having fun. Navalniy, for instance. (Kiselyov 2014)

The “5th column” metaphor is an inherited Soviet propaganda concept (Silina 2011) that
has frequently been invoked throughout the coverage of sanctions. Overall, historical
referencing is a common technique in Russian communicative space, which is usually
employed as a supporting argument.
12 A. GUTER-SANDU AND E. KUZNETSOVA

The third building block of the narrative of resilience Kiselyov is promoting to his audi-
ence is thus concerned with identifying the enemy that is besieging the Russian people.
Taken at face value, the easy answer is US imperialism. But Kiselyov remains ambiguous
regarding this and constructs an elaborate worldview: on the one hand, imperialism is
at once pernicious, given that it renders classical cultures like the Europeans devoid of
authentic values and engaged in an irremediable process of decadence, and dangerous,
given that it encroaches upon Russian interests and autonomy; on the other hand, a
certain degree of imperialism is acceptable, given that the true state of the world is one
characterised by multipolarity with certain powerful actors like Russia constituting the
nodes in these poles. Furthermore, Kiselyov warns that victims of US imperialism, in this
case Europe, can become at the same time perpetrators, and thus the Russian people
who cannot help but look up to European culture, should do so with a big grain of salt.
Lastly, there are domestic ramifications as well, with the 5th column being revived directly
or indirectly by these same dynamics and constituting an equally menacing threat. Three
categories of enemies, therefore, populate Kiselyov’s narrative and make for a constant
threat against which the Russian people should foster resilience and carry on.

The discourse of resilience and Russia’s sanctioned identity

How does this discourse of resilience fit within the wider Russian ideational context, par-
ticularly within debates regarding national identity? We argue that the roots of this dis-
course of resilience can be found in a deep-seated “frustration” of the Russian political
elite regarding Western attitudes towards the integration of a Post-Soviet Russia into
world affairs. Resilience, construed as a discourse made up of the three building blocks
outlined above and which is meant to elicit a behavioural or at least attitudinal response
from the “Russian people”, can thus be seen as an emergent feature of precisely this quest
to carve out a self-identity and the response of the West to that process which eventually
led to an identity which become, in a sense, “sanctioned”.
The discourse of resilience should thus be understood against the backdrop of the ten-
sions between Russian heritage, Western attitudes, and future potential. In an environ-
ment in which popular geopolitics becomes ever more important in mass acquiescence
and alignment with state direction (Suslov 2014), the way elite actors employ specific nar-
ratives and leverage their privileged power-position provides an insightful angle through
which this process can be witnessed and analysed. Our analysis has thus allowed us to
enhance our understanding of the following elements of the Russian foreign policy
amidst the acute confrontation with the West: the deepest concerns of the country’s
ruling elite, an important element of identity construction in the post-Soviet ideational
space, and ultimately, the use of resilience discourse as a tool of governance that has impli-
cations for the foreign policy choice in response to an external economic punishment.
Oftentimes, Russian foreign policy is assessed by Western media as driven primarily by
sentiment rather than logic: be it nostalgia for the Soviet past, imperialist drives, nationalist
spirits, Russian politicians’ egomania, reckless ambitions, proclivity to brinksmanship, or
nothing less than Putin’s purported Asperger’s syndrome (USA TODAY 2015). These
traits are assumed to be shifting constantly, according to when political opportunity pro-
vides itself, which ultimately renders Russia into an irresponsible and unreliable partner
(Feklyunina 2012). Behind this façade of opportunistic or rash decisions, it is claimed,
 EAST EUROPEAN POLITICS 13

there is neither consistency nor an overarching strategy (Saari 2014). This is further
attested by the role that symbolic recognition of Russia’s distinctiveness plays on its
status conflicts with the West: Russia is more outspoken and indignant when it comes
to disputes of international norms and justice, and less so when military or economic
issues are at stake (Forsberg 2014). Our findings suggest that while all the points that
are traditionally the focus of research on Russian foreign policy, such as geopolitical press-
ures in Ukraine – geographical proximity, NATO encroachment, control over naval bases
and waterways, major economic ties, etc. (Götz 2015) – are present in Kiselyov’s discourse,
they can also be interpreted as part of a Russian quest for building a post-Soviet identity,
and sanctions provide the elite with an important ideational fuel for such efforts.
Indeed, ever since the collapse of the USSR, Russia has been attempting to carve out a
post-Soviet identity for itself, and this has been one of the most important determinants of
the course of its foreign policy. As a salutary mechanism to escape the chaos of Yeltsin’s
presidency, the country elected Vladimir Putin, whose “paternalistic” rhetoric of restoring
the country’s great status on the international arena appealed to the people (Lukin 2009).
However, the inability to develop and implement a coherent strategy on the foreign policy
front has been sustained by the lack of a “purposeful set of ideas” (Monaghan 2017). This
harks back to the scepticism of the perestrojka era, which was not immediately replaced
with a common goal. Ranging from ideas of Eurasia and the multipolar world, orthodox
values and conservative sentiment to communist nostalgia, the country’s identity has
been fragmented.
Amid this ideational uncertainty and the lack of common purpose, Kiselyov discursively
instrumentalises sanctions, constructing them as a mobilising event to unite the country
against the aggressive “other”. These efforts, in turn, create an ideational environment for
strengthening self-identity, uniting the nation, giving the people something to fight
against. This is not unlike the official rhetorical response to the 9/11 attacks and the 7/7
London blasts, where a discourse of resilience has been repeatedly identified as the “pre-
ferred resource for making sense of terrorism” (Bean, Keränen, and Durfy 2011, 428). A
similar effect has been noticed in the case of Rhodesia, for example, when the government
controlled the public approval through continuous legitimisation of the strengthened
control over the media in the times of crisis (Galtung 1967). As Galtung puts it, “The sanc-
tions themselves may give the leaders pretexts to demonstrate their ability to share the
plight of the people. Under normal conditions such occasions are denied them and
such demonstrations would in fact make them appear ridiculous; under moderate hard-
ship they can act out a carefully balanced amount of heroism and sacrifice” (Galtung
1987, 395). Indeed, our findings reinforce the argument that authoritarian leaders can
find ways to cover themselves against the damage of sanctions (Veebel and Markus
2015; Verdier and Woo 2011). What the analysis adds to this discussion is that the pre-sanc-
tions domestic ideational environment becomes an important variable in this discursive
mechanism. In a sense, the way in which the elite communicates sanctions to the internal
public reflects the government’s impulse to ensure stability out of anxiety of the public
unrest, which in turn points to the deficit of the normative resources in the country for
providing effective governance.
Kiselyov targets this deficit, but the choice of the rhetoric of resilience is not necessarily
accidental; in fact, it could be construed as part of a global wave of increasing preoccupa-
tion with the notion and practice of resilience. Indeed, its scope has expanded to such a
14 A. GUTER-SANDU AND E. KUZNETSOVA

degree that it now spans across both natural and social sciences, and permeates disci-
plines as diverse as psychology, biology, environmental studies, engineering, economics,
and political science (Rogers 2015). The common current that undergirds these disciplines
is a sense of coping with foundational uncertainty, vulnerability, and insecurity, as well as
of bouncing back from potential or inevitable adversity. The implication here is that it is
endangerment, and not communal bonds, that provides the basis for the social contract,
and that the only attitude that one can adopt in front of such vulnerability and unavoid-
able disasters is responsibility and learned preparedness (Evans and Reid 2015). The ulti-
mate goal of the ethic of resilience is thus to thrive under potential or even manifest
permanent duress, something clearly visible in Kiselyov’s discourse.
In a similar fashion, our study looked at how resilience is summoned or fashioned in the
face of economic distress – in this case, sanctions. In this context, resilience is normally per-
ceived, especially by international financial institutions, either as the passive endurance of
some socio-economic entity despite global or structural economic pressures (IMF 2013;
OECD 2015) or as an organisational capacity that communities must actively foster in
order to cope with the countless dangers (capital flight, underdevelopment, wars,
climate change, terrorism, etc.) that might affect their vulnerable subsistence (World
Bank 2013; UN 2014). But in a way our study shows that in a figure like Kiselyov, this argu-
ment is essentially turned on its head, and what emerges is an understanding of resilience
as a discursive instrument to be put to political use in order to garner popular acquies-
cence to or support for political elites – thus also a means but to a very different end.
Given Kiselyov’s leveraged position, this instrument is able to travel deep within the ima-
ginary of the population in a way that it not only provides a specific representation of
reality, but it also fashions particular behaviours or subjectivities to be picked up by the
governed population.
Indeed, post-structuralist critique has emphasised how the process of governing should
really be understood as operating through a power-knowledge nexus, in such a way that
political action is always accompanied by truth claims which render the object of govern-
ment governable – this is what Foucault elsewhere terms “discursive practices” (Foucault
2002b). Power is not simply negative and repressive, but also positive and productive (Fou-
cault 1991, 2002a), in the sense that political action becomes effective through the intern-
alisation of such truth-claims and the sanctioning of specific types of subjectivities and the
delegitimisation of others. With this non-mechanistic understanding of the relationship
between power and knowledge we can even venture a claim that at the end of the day
Kiselyov can be perceived as a merchant of resilient subjectivities. Mass-media, by facilitat-
ing the distribution of elite narratives to the popular level, is a ready-made outfit for chan-
nelling these subjectivities, but as opposed to some accounts that see this form of
fostering popular geopolitics as inherently disempowering and stifling of (political) subjec-
tivity (e.g. Suslov 2014), we have argued that this is in fact a productive process that entails
a mobilising element (particularly through the idea of import substitution), which should
not be discounted. Furthermore, this process feeds into the social contract in such a way
that it transforms it, adding to its economic dimension layers of identity, autonomy, and
productivity, but ultimately it also reinforces it, disclosing its dynamic nature (Feldmann
and Mazepus 2018). Renewing the social contract by infusing it with the outlined building
blocks of resilience might even have the unintended consequence of surpassing the
ethno-nationalism characteristic of how the “Russian-Crimean unification” was portrayed
 EAST EUROPEAN POLITICS 15

(Teper 2016), and signalling a new understanding of Russia that has the state, as an econ-
omic polity, as its main point of reference.

Conclusion
In our quest to understand Russia’s response to the EU and US sanctions, we employed
critical discourse analysis in order to grasp the meaning of the discursive processes.
Overall, the discourse of resilience should be understood as a performative concept – at
once part of identity debates and a way of population management. Political action in
the case of economic sanctions, in other words, is accompanied by the promotion of
specific types of values, norms of conduct, standards for self-understanding. This is an
important channel through which specific agents or agencies can exercise power
beyond conventional means of direct coercion or repression, in order to mould identities
and achieve acquiescence. Our goal has not been to measure the impact of these endea-
vours, but to witness and analyse them as readily-available instruments for governing
populations. Resilience is thus not only important because it is an essential pillar
through which the tension between Russia’s identity and its reception abroad can be at
the same time sustained and suspended, but also because it can make for a very
effective means of governance.
By analysing the rhetorical structures surrounding Kiselyov’s narratives, this work has
exposed the mechanisms of enemy imaging combined with the countering techniques
through which resilient subjectivities were promoted. It shows how the rhetorical strategy
of resilience functions to regulate national concerns about the geopolitical state of the
country and unstable boundaries of identity in contemporary Russia. As this work demon-
strates, it operated through the systematic approach of the official discourse to construct-
ing national identity through the appeals to history and promoting national pride.
Particularly, three were the building blocks structuring the discourse of resilience: national
unity, import substitution, and enemy imaging. By entailing thus a mobilising factor, a
transformative opportunity, and a delineated threat respectively, the discourse surround-
ing economic sanctions sought to provide an encompassing framework with which the
audience could at once grasp the wider meaning of sanctions and adopt a specific attitude
and readiness for action.
By unpacking the imageries behind the subjectivity of resilience promoted by Kiselyov,
we were able to paint a more vivid picture of some of the more insidious ideological
elements which underpin Russia’s policies or that of politically aligned elites. At the
same time, we also showed how the Kremlin’s international ambitions are inherently inter-
twined with its domestic strategies. While this may be commonplace in studies of Western
polities, it is less acknowledged in the case of Russia. Moreover, our analysis has high-
lighted that the ideas promoted by Kiselyov, such as the various forms of counter-
measures against the West, including import substitution, can be analysed as an act of
insurgency against an implicit oppressor. Resilience is thus one of the most straightfor-
ward defense mechanisms against “Western hegemony”.
In the end, the discourse of resilience reflects the elite’s desire to foster stability amidst
the fears of public turmoil that the economic downturn in the country could cause, poten-
tially undermining the legitimacy of the government. Here, resilience can be understood
as a coping mechanism that on the one hand ensures the continuity of Putin’s
16 A. GUTER-SANDU AND E. KUZNETSOVA

government and on the other offers the population normative guidelines on how deal
with economic shocks. Most importantly, economic sanctions therefore are not merely a
negative force, but can also become a productive political tool which can be appropriated
and put to various political uses by signing up, in our case at least, leveraged actors.

Notes
1. Russian for the News of the Week.
2. In line with Fairclough (1995) we understand text in broad sense as a multiplicity of commu-
nicative forms (textual, visual and sound) that convey meaning.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors
Dr Andrei Guter-Sandu is a ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regu-
lation, London School of Economics and Political Science. He has a PhD in International Political
Economy and currently works on a project investigating how managerialist ideas and instruments
of quantification change the manner in which public services are governed and controlled.
Dr Elizaveta Kuznetsova is a research fellow at the Centre for International Policy Analysis (CIPS) at
City, University of London. Before completing her PhD in International Relations, she worked as a
broadcast journalist in Russia and the United Kingdom. She holds degrees in journalism from
Moscow State University and City, University of London. Elizaveta currently works on a project
that explores Soviet roots in Russia’s contemporary propaganda abroad, at Boston University.

ORCID
Andrei Guter-Sandu http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3143-6555
Elizaveta Kuznetsova http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3614-1804

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